From winning all five seats his party contested in the 2024 Lok Sabha elections to securing a key portfolio in the Union Cabinet, the past year has been eventful for Lok Janshakti Party (Ram Vilas) president Chirag Paswan, the Union Minister of Food Processing Industries. Paswan, 42, will be the guest at the Express Adda in Delhi on Tuesday. He will be in conversation with Anant Goenka, Executive Director, The Indian Express Group, and Vandita Mishra, National Opinion Editor, The Indian Express. After facing a huge setback in 2021 when his party split, Paswan made a remarkable comeback in the Lok Sabha polls with the LJP (RV) winning all five seats it contested in Bihar. This reaffirmed his leadership and connect with grassroots. Carrying forward the legacy of his father, the late Ram Vilas Paswan — a prominent Dalit leader and former Union minister —Chirag Paswan has steadily established himself as a key player in Bihar’s political landscape. His mass appeal and strong support among Dalit and other communities as well as youth have helped him expand his political footprint. With the Narendra Modi-led government 3.0 relying on the NDA allies for a majority, his role at the national level has become more significant. His inclusion in the Cabinet is not only a recognition of his party’s electoral success but also a signal of the Modi dispensation’s intent to strengthen its ties with Bihar ahead of the state Assembly elections later this year, in which Paswan is set to play a key role. The LJP(RV) is considered the third most important NDA ally at the Centre after the TDP and the JD (U). As the Centre rolls out initiatives targeted at Bihar—including announcement of a Makhana Board—the LJP (RV) gains strategic importance. The Bihar elections will be a crucial test of Paswan’s leadership and his ability to convert national attention into state-level influence, shaping the arc of his future journey. At his ministry currently, the biggest thing on Paswan’s agenda is the World Food India, a mega food event that will be organised in September in Delhi. Express Adda is a series of informal interactions with newsmakers in the presence of a select audience. Guests have included Nobel Laureate Amartya Sen, External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar, Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman, His Holiness the Dalai Lama, philanthropist Bill Gates, actors Pankaj Tripathi and Tabu, oncologist and writer Siddhartha Mukherjee, musician T M Krishna, ecologist Romulus Whitaker and writer William Dalrymple.
